Those peanut butter M&M cookies

No worries about a white Christmas this year. Thank heaven for supremely nice neighbors with snow blowers.Best early Christmas present ever.

More time to stay inside and bake cookies, and then worry about how to deliver them.

This recipe is one I've been making since 1993 when I saw the ad in a magazine that used red and green M&M baking bits. Like many traditions, I didn't realize I was starting one until it was too late. But they turned out to be a big hit with the small children (and larger ones) on Dave's side of the family, so I kept making them. As the boys grew, they were prone to fighting over them, so I started making a double batch to keep up with demand. I realize it wasn't really the cookies themselves so much as three boys that closely spaced in age wrestling over anything not nailed down, but I started giving each of the offspring and their father their own package of cookies, so then we were up to three to four batches. Of course now there are several grands involved, so we're now at four to five batches so they have a fighting chance at getting some.

There have been challenges over the years, like when M&M baking bits stopped being available in local grocery stores -- not just the green and red ones but ANY baking bits. I had to turn to an off brand supplier from overseas via Amazon to make them for a few years. And then there was the year the squirrel tore into the Amazon package, the one and only time we've ever had a package attacked by squirrels, This one seems to have gone into a sugar frenzy, but thankfully the packages were individually wrapped so not all was lost.

Luckily M&M baking bits returned to stores eventually, and although the pandemic posed supply chain issues, they weren't insurmountable.

So as a first annual installment of my multitude of Christmas cookie recipes, here are the M&M cookies. I know they aren't everyone's must have, but they're a reliable kid pleaser, and they provide a splash of color to the cookie tray. 

Peanut butter M&M cookies
From an ad in Midwest Living magazine, Dec. 1993. If you can find the green and red holiday version, they're more Christmasy, but they'll disappear readily either way.

Ingredients
1¾ cup flour
¾ teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup peanut butter (I use chunky style)
1¼ cup brown sugar
½ cup shortening
3 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 egg, beaten
1 cup M&M baking bits, plus more for garnish

Method
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine flour, salt and baking soda in medium bowl. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine peanut butter, brown sugar and shortening. Cream until fluffy. Add milk, vanilla and egg. Mix well. Add dry ingredients and mix on low speed just until blended. Stir in 1 cup baking bits.

Using a teaspoon (the kind you eat with, not a measuring teaspoon), form balls of cookie dough and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet two inches apart. Press additional M&M bits onto the cookie surface. Bake until they get the slightest hint of browning and are set. The original recipe said 6 to 7 minutes but I’ve found setting the timer for 9 minutes works well in my oven. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Makes at least 36, depending on how big you make them. If they're smaller, you can eat more of them, right?

Rating: Better than the gas station variety, certainly. A reliable delivery device for peanut butter and chocolate. After 29 years, I can't imagine not making them.

A few other holiday cookies:

Almond double (or triple) deckers

Maple cookies

Confetti cookies

Cookie butter cookies

Almond double (or triple) decker cookies

 

In mid-November, I received an e-mail from my great nephew with a suggestion: "I have this idea for a cookie, where there are three layers of sandwich cookies, where there are three sugar cookies with two frostings with complimenting flavors, for example, almond and pecan frostings on the cookies."

Who can resist such a challenge?  Well, obviously not me. First step: Find an almond-flavored sugar cookie.When the December issue of Martha Stewart Living arrived, it reminded me of her brandy-flavored sugar cookies, so why not sub in almond liqueur? 

The fillings were harder to ponder. Pecan and apricot could go nicely, for instance, but I already make some sour cream rollup cookies filled with almonds, apricots and coconut, so that seemed duplicative. So, almond and what? Or how about almond in two different textures? And let's put an almond on top to gild the lily.

Thus began the experiment with triple layer cookies, double-filled cookies, and to hedge my bets I tried some with layers of almond and maple cream.

Just so you know, Henry, I don't always take requests. But these were worth a shot, so thanks for the suggestion.

Almond double (or triple) deckers

The sugar cookie recipe is adapted from Martha Stewart’s Ideal Sugar Cookie recipe, the almond icing is taken from part of a wonderful-looking cookie that I might have to try next year, a Bavarian almond sandwich cookie from Mary Ehrenberger, a State Fair of Texas winner on the Gold Medal Flour site.

Ingredients

2 cups flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup sugar

½ cup butter, room temperature

1 lightly beaten egg

2 tablespoons almond liqueur (I used Disaronno, but Amaretto or even Frangelico would work as well)

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Almond cake and pastry filling (you’ll use a small bit of 12.5-ounce can)

Sliced almonds for garnish

For Almond Icing:

3 cups powdered sugar

2 tablespoons butter, room temperature

3 tablespoons water

1 tablespoon almond liqueur

1 tablespoon corn syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon almond extract

Method

Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl and set aside. Cream sugar and butter until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add egg, brandy and vanilla and combine well. Slowly add reserved flour mixture on low until just combined.

Divide dough in half. Shape each half into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least an hour to make it easier to roll out.

Preheat oven to 350. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.

Roll out dough to about 1/8-inch thick on a lightly floured board (or I found it helped to roll it in between two layers of plastic wrap). Cut into preferred shapes; I chose to cut them into rectangles with a pastry cutter so they weren’t matchy-matchy with the other sandwich cookies I make. Transfer to baking sheets, placing 1 inch apart. If you’re making double deckers, place a sliced almond on top of half of the cookies. If you’re doing triple deckers, place an almond slice in the center of a third of the cookies. (These will be your top layer.)

Bake about 10 minutes at 350 until cooked through but not brown. Transfer sheets to wire racks to cool completely.

Pair up your cookies according to size matches, either in twos or threes, with one almond-topped cookie for your top layer. (At this point you can seal them in a plastic storage box and store them until ready to ice them, either a few days at room temperature or longer in the freezer. Thaw before frosting.)

To make the icing, beat all the ingredients together.

To assemble the layers, spread the almond icing on the bottom layer. If making triple deckers, spread the pastry filling on the top of the second layer cookie and stack it on top of the frosted bottom layer; top with an almond-garnished cookie. If making double deckers, frost the bottom layer with the icing and spread the pastry filling on the bottom of an almond-garnished cookie that you then stack on top of the bottom layer.

Your yield will vary based on how small you cut your cookies and how many layers you opt for. I experimented with different sizes. I think my preferred size was about 1½ inches square. I’d say you get about 3 dozen cookie parts out of the dough recipe, so you get either a dozen triple deckers  or 18 double deckers. I wound up making two batches of dough to get about 3 dozen cookies of various varieties.

Rating: I’d say these were well-received at the first family Christmas gathering, and definitely worth repeating to fine tune. The combo pack of the two almond flavors worked better than the maple cream both flavor-wise and in terms of structural integrity. I personally give the edge to the double decker variety, because I think they offer a better ratio of filling to cookie, but was pleasantly surprised that the triple deckers actually stuck together and weren't just monstrosities. At any rate, they certainly held their own amid the 10 kinds of cookies I baked.

  

The other new recipe I tried this season was one of the Star Tribune Taste section winners from this year, the white chocolate cherry tea cakes. They were tasty, because they're tea cakes and thus good eats. But really, I probably won't make them again because they're duplicative of the pecan sandies that are part of the core of must-make cookies every year. If I did make them again, I'm pondering what they would be like if the cherries were soaked in a liqueur. 

If you're still pondering what cookies to make, either this year or next, try the Star Tribune's online cookie finder. Or find all the past year's cookie contest winners collected in the newly released cookbook. It's handy to have them all in one spot and not have to print them out or keep flicking the recipe up and down on your phone.